Hagfish Take Weeks to Recover from Sliming Someone

If you see this animal, don't anger it. A hagfish under attack releases thick, clear slime in astonishing quantities. Now scientists have learned that this mucus is a precious resource for a hagfish. After sliming a predator, the fish can take nearly a month to refill its slime glands. Hagfish live on the ocean bottom, where they're opportunistic scavengers and hunters. The fish's potential predators back off quickly after getting a faceful of slime, which clogs their gills. Hagfish, also called slime eels, can free themselves of their own mucus by tying their snaky bodies in a knot and scraping it off. (A highway in Oregon was harder to clean up after a truck full of hagfish crashed there last year.) The slime itself is a feat of molecular engineering. It comes out of glands that line both sides of the hagfish's body. The glands hold two kinds of cells: ...